I’ve started a new blog!

If you knew me before finding this page you may have been aware of my other blog, LBAK. I’m hesitant to call it my “old blog” because I haven’t quite decided what to do with it yet. I was getting a little bit bored with WordPress and wanted to start something a little more hackerish. Then I found Octopress.

Octopress

Octopress is self described as “A blogging framework for hackers.” I can tell that they’re not lying by the fact that I’m deploying it with Git and editing my posts in Vim. Here’s the standard workflow for creating a new post:

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$ rake new_post["Post title"]
$ vim source/_posts/2011-01-01-post-title

Then I edit the post’s content in markdown and preview it in my browser by booting up a local server with a handy rake task:

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$ rake preview

And voila. I get to see my post. The task even monitors my filesystem for changes and regenerates the site as needed. Lush.

I decided to deploy the site on Heroku for now, so when I’m done with a new post I just do the following:

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$ git add -A
$ git commit -m "New post, woot!"
$ git push heroku

And that’s it. The post is deployed to http://samwho.co.uk like a boss. I feel so at home.

But Sam, what about LBAK?

I’m not sure yet. I want to keep it around because there are links to it and stuff but I don’t think I’ll maintain it very much. It might so happen that I decide to keep it as a more person/non-code related blog but I’m still giving it thought.

Don’t fear, the LBAK acronym still holds a special place in my heart and I have no interest in abandoning it. I just felt the need for change.

But Sam, what about your @lbak.co.uk email address?

Yeeeeaaahhh… I’ll probably keep the email address, which means keeping the domain. Fortunately domain names cost almost nothing and the email server is run by a very generous friend of mine, so I don’t really pay anything for it. Eventually that situation might change, at which point I’ll need to explore other options, but for now the samwho@lbak.co.uk email address is here to stay.

So why the change?

I was noticing that my WordPress blog had a mixture of posts in it. It had no real focus, and focus is kind of key to having a regular audience. I want this blog to be for my coding adventures. I want to blog far more often about what I do.

I also felt the need for something more beautiful. Let’s be honest, Octopress is absolutely gorgeous. My old blog felt like it was missing that glorious web 2.0 sheen.

Act 2

So starts the second Act of my blogging career. LBAK was great fun but the rebrand to samwho will hopefully be filled with even more joy and excitement.

See you there!